“Melchizedek met Abraham and blessed him.” Melchizedek appears in only three verses in the Book of Genesis. In the letter to the Hebrews he is prominently featured. Why so much emphasis on such a seemingly minor figure? In the case of the early Church Melchizedek provides a model to expand the notion of what it meant to be “the people of God.” Instead of limiting those who are considered “one of our own” to blood kin, Melchizedek shows that the children of Abraham are blessed by an outsider. Thus, our notion of who belongs to God must be broader than we first imagined it to be. In these times when people are excluding those who are different let’s remember we’re all children of God.
